


What Happens in the Blanket Fort Stays in the Blanket Fort

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Light Angst, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Platonic Cuddling, Precious Peter Parker, Quarantine, Sleepy Cuddles, Sleepy Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, scout's honor it is the absolute lightest angst you could imagine, this is certified Soft™, wow how is that not a tag yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23237191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: “Well, Iwasgonna discuss with May some legal particulars about changes to my will that involve you,” Tony drawls, “but looks like I’ll just have to change my plans.”There’s a beat. And then a yodel: “I’m just a poor boy, I need--”“If not for this goddamn quarantine, I’d be there in a flash to shut you up myself, Spidey-Tighties.”“Youmadethese ‘tights’.”“Funsie-onesie.”“Mr. Stark.”“Cooty-footies.”“Mr.Stark. I’m begging you. What does that evenmean.”--Tony comes over to keep Peter company during the quarantine while the kid waits for May to come home from work at the hospital. Bants are had. Feelings are spilled. And maybe, just maybe, a hug or two is shared.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 70
Kudos: 480
Collections: ellie marvel fics - read, marvel fics that are marvelous





	What Happens in the Blanket Fort Stays in the Blanket Fort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [josywbu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/josywbu/gifts).



> I'm back on my Baby Peter bullshit which means Peter is officially a wee lil teenager in this universe. It's been refreshing to come back to Certified Baby Spidey™ after writing so many fics about him being in college, truly.
> 
> This one goes out to @josywbu, my dear, dear materino whom I betrayed with whump and angst last time. So please, accept this piece of emotional comfort and fluff as a peace offering.
> 
> Prompt fill for josywbu's request from [this drabble challenge](https://theoceanismyinkwell.tumblr.com/post/189721940158/drabble-challenge-1-150) on Tumblr: "'I don't do hugs.' with tony, sniffing dramatically as he pulls peter closer cause he’s a big soft marshmallow." I hope this was everything you hoped and dreamed for!!
> 
> Shoutout to @seekrest, @impravidus and @coconutknightshade for helping me decide what kinda face mask Peter uses lol

Tony squints at his phone screen with only slight annoyance when Peter picks up his WhatsApp call but switches the video request to voice only.

“What gives, kid? Is there a kidnapper holding you hostage at the kitchen table? Switch it back to video.”

Peter’s voice sounds slightly muffled around an...edible something. “No can do. I’m wearing a clay face mask and you haven’t ascended to to level thirty-nine in our relationship where you can just expect me to, like, bare myself like that to you.”

Tony rolls his eyes but can’t help the smirk tugging at his mouth. “Geez, you coulda just said it was a bad acne day.”

“I’m wearing a _mask_ ,” Peter protests. “You wouldn’t understand because you’re a caveman.” There’s a squelchy sound. Oh, yeah. Banana. Tony called it. The kid is totally munching on a banana.

“Excuse me?”

“Actually, you’re a caveman with a razor,” Peter amends magnanimously. “Why’d you call, Mr. Stark?”

“Believe it or not, I was actually looking for your taller, better, slightly scarier half. Aunt Carbonara. Woman who can’t cook to save her life. You know the one.”

“She’s at work,” Peter says slowly. “Why?”

“At this time?” Tony says, before he can help himself. Right. May Parker is a hospital pediatric nurse who more often than not gets shuffled around the night shifts. He knows this; Peter has mentioned it to him more than enough times with those subtle sad puppy eyes. “Right, well. That explains why I kept going to voicemail.”

Peter’s answering tone is dry. “Yeah, Mr. Stark, there are actually people who don’t answer their phones during meetings. It’s a privilege that’s slightly above their pay grade.”

“Well, you’re a little shit,” Tony says matter-of-factly. He crosses his ankle over the other and leans further back onto his bed. “Me answering those calls during board meetings has saved your ass more than eleven times.”

“If I remember correctly, it was more of a _call Peter in the middle of home room and make him fake a medical emergency to get you out of there_ sorta deal.”

Tony waves a hand in the air. “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. What time does May get home?”

“Sometime after five. Can you just leave me the message for her?”

“Eh, it’s not in dire need of attention.”

“Right,” says Peter, chewing his lip, “unlike you.”

“Well, I _was_ gonna discuss with her some legal particulars about changes to my will that involve you,” Tony drawls, “but looks like I’ll just have to change my plans.”

There’s a beat. And then a yodel: “ _I’m just a poor boy, I need--_ ”

“If not for this goddamn quarantine, I’d be there in a flash to shut you up myself, Spidey-Tighties.”

“You _made_ these ‘tights’.”

“Funsie-onesie.”

“Mr. Stark.”

“Cooty-footies.”

“Mr. _Stark_. I’m begging you. What does that even _mean_.”

“I’m bored out of my mind, kid, not even gonna lie to you. Turn on video so I can see your dumb face.”

“Or you could come over and see my dumb face in HD.”

“What part of ‘social distancing’ do you not understand?”

“Statistically, I’m the last person who could either infect you or be infected,” Peter points out. “Super-mutations, remember?”

Tony shudders involuntarily at the fleeting remembrance of all the trials and errors (mostly errors) (horrifying, mortifying errors) developing anesthetics and antibiotics for Peter that would actually live up to the wrath of said super-mutations.

“We don’t know whether your ultra-special DNA has finally found its match with this thing going around,” Tony protests weakly.

“I got Stark Raving Hazelnuts in the freezer. Three gallons of it.”

“You make a solid argument,” the man says after a pause. “See ya in ten.”

\--

The door of the apartment swings open just as Tony’s retracting the nanites into his bionic arm. Peter blinks up at him and geez, Tony knew the kid was wearing a face mask, but he wasn’t actually prepared for the visual that accompanied that information.

“My cheeks have officially been cemented in place,” Peter says by way of greeting, “so for the rest of the evening I shall be communicating via the art of eyebrows.”

Tony steps inside with a sniff and surveys the spread of snacks and board games the boy has already laid out on the long glass coffee table in preparation for his arrival. He shakes off his shoes, then glances back at Peter with a squint. “Aren’t you supposed to take those things off after ten minutes?”

Peter shuffles past him to the living room, where he lifts the oatmeal-colored couch with an alarming casualness to make room for his blanket fort on the floor. “They said it’s a purifying mask that’ll get rid of all the gunk in my pores. Considering I get, like, ten times the gunk as a normal person by fighting crime around Queens, I figured leaving it on ten times as long would do the trick.”

“Pete-- _no_ \--”

“Anywho! Do you want Clue or Scrabble or Monopoly?”

“Anything as long as it’s not Pandemic.”

“Fair point.” Peter settles himself cross-legged in the center of his blanket nest and pats the space next to him impatiently. “Which one do you feel most confident at?”

“Monopoly. Why?”

“Good!” the kid says brightly, already unfolding the board. “I wanna see the look on your face when I crush you completely.”

Tony scoffs at that, but it turns out his nonchalance was perhaps premature. Fifteen minutes later finds the two of them knocking knees against each other in total aggression, bowls of ice cream forgotten on the carpet and each one hollering and gasping in varying degrees of betrayal.

The game lasts nearly another forty minutes before Tony finally concedes his title to the kid. He flops down in his blanket bed with a dramatic sigh. “This isn’t over, wall-crawler. Just a break until next time, you’ll see.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Stark,” the boy says sweetly. He rubs his cheeks between his palms, still marveling at the softness of his skin there from when he washed off the mask during their bathroom break.

Tony, who’s had his feet in Peter’s lap for God knows how long, nudges the boy in the stomach with his toe. “Time’s it, kid?”

Peter checks his phone on the corner of the coffee table. “A little past two.”

“Sheesh. Wow. A+ mentoring skills here, for sure. Let’s get you to bed now, ya little eight-eyed pest.”

“Sure,” Peter mumbles around a yawn. He drops his head back against the couch. “In a minute.”

“In a minute,” Tony agrees. His own syllables are rounded by sleep. He nestles deeper into the warmth of their fort and rests his head back against his arm. The light from the kitchen, more muted and energy-saving than the one in the living room, slants through the top corner of their little space and illuminates the edges of the little plastic Monopoly figurines on the table in strokes of soft gold. Tony entertains the lingering thought that he could stay like this as close to forever as he ever dared, and he could die a happy man.

“We really should sleep somewhere more comfortable,” Tony mutters. “Can’t stay up all night waiting for your aunt.”

Peter blinks sleepily at him. One of his hands rubs the top of Tony’s socked foot unconsciously. “’M not tired,” he says, self-contradictorily. “I’ve stayed up waiting for her before. You can--you can go to sleep. It’s nice ’n’ comfy here…”

“Mm,” Tony hums, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

A space of silence hangs around them in a warm embrace. Peter times his breaths with the rhythm of his mentor’s heartbeat, and Tony blinks intermittently up at the ceiling of their fort as he tunes in on the faint whistle of the air leaving Peter’s lungs.

“Your aunt’s a real hero,” the man mumbles. “Her--the staff--all the nurses. Going out there at a time like this.”

Peter shifts a little in surprise. He nods. “Yeah. They don’t have a choice, really.”

“Which is what makes them so damn admirable,” Tony points out. “I mean, the risk of exposure is one thing, sure, but just--just imagine all the emotional upheaval you could encounter in one hour at a hospital. On a normal day, let alone a night like this.”

“Yeah.” Peter’s voice has suddenly grown thick. “Yeah, that’s--yeah.”

More seconds of quiet fill the air. Peter flops his head down, and Tony feels the tug of his movement on the blankets and the rasp of the boy’s hair through the fabric of his sock.

“Are you--are you _sniffing_ my foot right now?”

“Nohoho,” Peter groans around a mouthful of fleece blanket. “’M not, I swear. I was trying to hide my head in my lap an’ your foot was in the way.”

Tony kicks him in the shoulder for that. Lightly. When the kid barely responds and the man has waited for over ten seconds, he creaks into an upright position, brow furrowed in concern.

“Pete? You suffocating down there?”

A telltale sniffle greets him. Peter sits up too fast to cover the sound, and the back of his skull collides squarely with Tony’s nose. The two curse and fumble around the explosion of pain.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Peter insists. “Oh gosh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Stark.”

The man nurses his nose a bit longer and then waves a hand dismissively in Pete’s direction. “Seriously, what kid _hasn’t_ accidentally injured his parents at least once in his life. But more to the point. You okay?”

“’M fine,” Peter says again, with awe-inspiring stubbornness, even as his nose runs again and he has to drag his sleeve across his face to mop it all up.

Tony raises a skeptical brow.

“I just miss her, is all.” 

“Ah.”

“Yeah.” Peter smears the rest of the moisture from his eyes with his fingers. “Literally, if you tell her I cried over her being on the night shift, I swear to God, Mr. Stark, I will find you and I will--”

“Hey, hey, woah, no need to go all Liam Neeson on me. I’m not telling anybody.”

Peter’s chest shudders. “Ugh. This _sucks_.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“It _really_ , really sucks.”

“You can say that one more time.”

“I just get all...anxious and stuff, y’know? ’Cause she’s out there at a time like this, helping sick people, and they need her out there but…”

“But you need her here, too,” Tony finishes for him, softly. “Right here, safe and sound.”

“Uh-huh.” Peter’s head dips once in a nod.

“Hey, buddy?”

Peter’s watery gaze fixes on him. “Yeah?”

Tony opens his mouth to say _c’mere_ , but he thinks better of it and gets up on his knees instead and shuffles over to the kid. He sways there on his knees, hovering awkwardly over Peter for a minute, as the boy looks up at him in round-eyed confusion. Tony sniffs. And then he is--preposterously--miraculously--drawing the kid in for a one-armed hug.

That’s all it takes for Peter to melt into his side and wrap both arms around Tony’s middle like a skinny, be-hoodied koala. “Aww, Mr. Stark,” Peter mumbles into the fabric over Tony’s stomach.

“Yeah, yeah,” his mentor says with another sniff. “I don’t do hugs, so don’t get too used to it.”

Maybe he’s imagining it, but he could’ve sworn he feels the curve of Peter’s cheek curl into a smile against his torso.

It’s a smile that, hours later, will find its way onto May Parker’s face, weary but glowing, when she shuffles into the apartment and flicks on the hallway light to see the shadows of Tony and Peter lying cuddled next to each other in their blanket fort in the middle of the living room. She will shake her head a little and make her way toward them, picking her way around the pile of board games and pillows, and stand there in the peachy five a.m. gloom, as birds chitter outside and the tender sun begins to dawn on the peaceful faces of her two favorite fools.

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously, though, kudos to all the healthcare workers out there handling things like absolute champs. My sister is a doc and the levels of stress and emotional upheaval that she encounters at the hospital every day can be overwhelming. I would send y'all all the virtual hugs of gratitude that I could.
> 
> By the way, you are always free to send me prompts! You can shout at me at my tumblr or drop the prompt here in a comment below!! Let me know your thoughts! Stay hydrated, remember to breathe, find a new hobby, catch up with your loved ones and long-distance friends on social media, leave time for meditation, the works. We can get through this!! <3 -kaleb
> 
> muh tumblr: theoceanismyinkwell  
> muh insta: kc.barrie  
> muh ko-fi: kalebbarrie


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